Regional Policy as a Significant Element of Ensuring the National Security of the Russian Federation

Regional policy is a significant element of the domestic politics of a unitary state, and for a federal state it is a zone of increased attention. Russia is an asymmetric ethno-confessional democratic federation, therefore, there is a constant competition between centrifugal and centripetal trends. To ensure the integrity of the state, the leadership of the Russian Federation (RF) has to constantly transform regional policy, based on the peculiarities of the socio-economic and political situation. In the arsenal of this policy, there is a diverse arsenal of means and methods of countering separatism and extremism, which was used throughout the post-Soviet period of Russia's history. Within the first decade, the regional policy of the country's leadership was unsuccessful and ineffective, which actually led to a civil war and the beginning of the country's collapse. Since 2001, as a result of the application of radical and unpopular measures and the reform of socio-economic relations, the situation has been reversed, and then normalized. This became possible as a result of the restriction of democratic principles and the strengthening of authoritarian elements of regional politics, as well as the preservation of the archaic asymmetric structure of the federation.